You don't have to work for the Astros or any team to be baseball cool in this town, and Daren Willman is quintessential baseball cool.

A 32-year-old who was born in Pittsburgh but spent most his life in Houston, Willman is the lead software architect at the Harris County District Attorney's Office. His office is on Minute Maid Park's porch, and his day job is a conversation-starter by itself.

"So I have a mobile app - this is more cutesy than anything else," Willman said. "If I were to take a picture of you and you have a mug shot in our system, it would pull back your criminal history, just by pulling back a picture of your face."

Seamheads might say Willman's side projects are even more intriguing. On his own time, he has created a trio of websites, BaseballSavant.com, MLBfarm.com and NFLsavant.com, that could keep any hardcore sports fan entertained for hours.

"Ideally, I just wanted to get back into baseball," Willman said. "I've always been around baseball, loved it. … It was all about getting my hands on the information. But I didn't realize they had it out there. I wish I had found it six years ago."

The lefthanded pitcher with the most strikeouts on a slider in the majors? Dallas Keuchel, according to an instantaneous search on Baseball Savant. That's a rather rudimentary capability - the site allows for all sorts of graphical representations of the locations of hits and pitches and more.

In the age of big data, front offices have their eyes peeled.

"That's pretty cool, just getting emails from teams," Willman said. "The Blue Jays have reached out, not for job opportunities: 'We really like what you did and we're going to keep an eye on your stuff.' "

Willman has interviewed with a couple of teams, the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers, since the first of his websites, Baseball Savant, launched around opening day a year ago. There wasn't a fit.

The Astros front office knows of Willman's work.

"I remember I tweeted out something to Jeff Luhnow, hoping he'd see it," Willman said of launch day.

Willman is not actively fishing for a job in baseball. He's open-minded, but just being able to say "I work in baseball" isn't everyone's be-all, end-all. In many ways, he already is.

Talks the talk

Willman is absolutely a techie, but little about him fits the stereotype. He played Division III baseball at Texas Lutheran and passed on chances to play Division I. An Astros fan with no problem wearing a slightly beat-up Boston Red Sox cap - his wife Meagan is from New England - Willman looks more like a Ray-Ban toting Californian than a Poindexter born in Pittsburgh.

He will politely correct you, though, if you pronounce a programming language wrong.

"If you say 'S-Q-L,' people that know will be like, 'He doesn't know it,' " he said.

The correct way to speak of the programming language is to pronounce it like the word 'sequel.'

When Willman started working for the DA's office in 2006, little was centralized. He linked different elements together on a website: rap sheets, mug shots, etc.

Conceptually, Willman's work is at least a distant cousin to Ground Control, the project the Astros undertook a couple of years ago to created a website centralizing all their baseball data and reports.

Spring training start

Enter Savant, a site whose construction started last spring training. It's a project inspired by the work of Brown University neuroscientist Dan Brooks, who runs the invaluable BrooksBaseball.net along with Harry Pavlidis, Baseball Prospectus' director of technology.

"I think I was actually sitting on the couch and spring training baseball was on," Willman said of when he was browsing BrooksBaseball.net and started thinking. " 'Look, that's cool (stuff). How the hell is he doing that?' I was just like, 'All right, let me figure this out.' I just tried to figure it out on my own."

Willman's site runs off of data called PITCHf/x that Major League Baseball Advanced Media - the parent company of MLB.com - and a company called Sportvision make publicly available. But one has to know how to utilize that data.

"Now, Mike Fast, who works for the Astros, he has a site that kind of explains what some of the (input) fields are," Willman said. "They're kind of named weird stuff. … It's like, 'What the hell does that mean?' (Fast) has a site, a little tutorial on his website, and I kind of used that and pieced together what some of the data was."

The project evolved as these things always do: rather obsessively, and perhaps with some frustration for a significant other. Willman and Meagan are expecting the couple's first child in September, and the site doesn't require quite as much work these days.

Coincidentally, Meagan's father owns a fencing company in Houston that handled the foul poles at Minute Maid Park.

Once Savant was up and running, the 'A-ha' moment came this year. Willman created maps showing every major league team's travel schedules this season. The website Deadspin picked it up, and traffic exploded.

"They just found it and put it out there," Willman said. "I have this Google analytics, it tells you your web traffic, and I was just sitting there and I pulled it up. Usually, you know, there's like five or six people on it at a time, and you kind of mess around with it. And it was at 1,175, or something like that.

"At first I was like, I hope the site doesn't crash."

It's only grown since, with additions arriving at the suggestion of Twitter users. His next project was dedicated to the Astros' farm system, tracking their minor leaguers and only theirs. But when he was asked if he could do the same thing for all 30 teams, MLBfarm.com was born.

Brooks and Willman have even collaborated some.

"I think what Harry and I did, and it seems as though what Daren did, is a little bit more organic," Brooks said. "As people become interested in different things, that's part of the direction it goes, it's a little bit more free-form."

"I think what Daren does is really good. I think that more people interested in this data is always better."

Fast, an integral part of the Astros' operation, was glad to know he was an influence on Willman.

It's important to note, though, that neither Brooks nor Fast was the genesis. Josh Kalk, who works for the Tampa Bay Rays, and Jeff Zimmerman, who writes for FanGraphs, are just a couple who have advanced tools that are publicly and privately available to teams.

"I'm very impressed with what Daren has built on both of his (baseball) websites," Fast wrote. "He has good sense for what information is interesting.

"My own career is built on following in the footsteps of smart people who went before me, so I'm pleased when others can build on my work. Even more so when it's a local guy and Astros fan like Daren."

Not just baseball

He's moved on to football now, too - and had an interview with the Jacksonville Jaguars. People these days email him for advice frequently on how to build their own site.

"I've made 10 dollars off it," Willman said. "Somebody asked me if I would add a donate thing. … I'm not looking for donations or anything, (and) he was like, 'We really want to donate something to you.' So he gave me 10 bucks."

Despite working so close to the stadium, Willman has been to only one game this year. Asked if he watches at home, he had the perfect answer: "I wish."